Sig Christenson: At Fort Hood, a grim situation worsens

Today’s story on a surge in suicides at Fort Hood is more grim news for the Army.

Of course, it is worse news for our country, and the graphic on Army commitments worldwide shows why. If the Air Force has sleek jets, the Navy awesome aircraft carriers and Marines an aura of glory, the Army is the center of gravity for our nation’s defense.

If it breaks, we’re a paper tiger.

What the Army and its leaders have done in Iraq is nothing short of amazing. Only seven years ago this week the 3rd Infantry Division advanced on Baghdad. Soon they took over the job of pacifying most of the country, and Americans died while an administration that had promised a quick victory grappled with the reality of a long and ugly occupation.

The Army adapted. Once trained to fight a mechanized war, it embraced the far more subtle teachings of counterinsurgency. Sergeants who led Bradley dismounts into battle seven years ago this week were helping start up businesses in Baghdad districts like Dora in 2007, fighting this time with pens and $1,000 microgrants while other American GIs trained the Iraqi army in remote outposts. They were wildly successful, proving the many skeptics among us wrong, but with each new tour, evidence of trouble mounted.

It took a long time for our civilian leaders to admit what our commanders in Baghdad knew in the summer of 2003, which was that their lightning victory had morphed into a quagmire. And it took longer for anyone to realize that the Army was too small to do the job it was given and that this nation’s foreign-policy commitments had strained our force in terrible ways. Frankly, it would have taken even longer if not for the shrinking cadre of reporters around the country who specialized in covering our military and both wars.

Now, there’s a new war, one that is largely unseen and still mostly unreported.

This one is fought mainly by enlisted men against an enemy that neither they nor anyone else sees. Both Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. George Casey, the Army chief of staff, agree that the strain brought on by years of war and multiple deployments is causing some of those soldiers to commit suicide.

To be sure, Casey is right when he says that not every soldier is a war veteran. About one-third have never deployed; another third kill themselves in theater, while many others take their own lives after returning home. And many things drive GIs to commit suicide. They come home from the war zone to busted marriages and some have financial problems. Others have had run-ins with commanders or are in legal trouble. They drink too much and abuse drugs. Some of those drugs are prescribed by military doctors, and the Army this week revealed it is trying to deal with that problem as well.

Life is a messy business, and so sometimes it’s a combination of those things.

And so the Army last year set a record by having 160 probable suicides, 140 of which were confirmed. That happened despite the Army and the Pentagon scrambling to to find solutions. A suicide prevention task force tackled the problem along with the National Institute of Mental Health. They created programs to help soldiers and their families better deal with stress. At Fort Hood, the former commander, Lt. Gen. Rick Lynch, created a Resiliency Campus and ordered GIs home early for family time.

In the end, the post last year reduced its suicide count by three from 2008. That looked like progress at Fort Hood, which last year led all posts worldwide with a total of 75 suicides since the invasion. Just why it is now seeing a rise in suicides that threatens to quickly eclipse its worst years, when 14 soldiers took their lives annually, is impossible for me to say. There are certainly clues, but neither the post nor the Army will share even the generic contents of suicide notes with those of us who follow this story.

So why did Spc. John Carl Lawson, a 31-year-old Iraq veteran from Phoenix, put a gun in his mouth Feb. 9 in Copperas Cove and pull the trigger?

The shroud of official secrecy and the inevitable stigma that comes with suicide are in play here. Maybe commanders at the post know; maybe they don’t. Maybe the suicide task force is as clueless now as it was the day it was formed. It could well be that many of the victims hide their stress until the moment their “resiliency cap,” as the Army calls it, is shattered and another life is lost, and that no one ever knows it. Casey made that point this week, and I can still hear his words as we stood in the lobby of a local resort hotel.

“I’ve been in the Army 40 years this summer and I can remember sitting around the orderly room after having a suicide, and everybody’s kicking themselves trying to

figure out why it happened and they should have seen something.” he said.

You’ve got to think that years ago someone in the Army saw something but either was in denial or stayed silent. Now good troops are paying the price, and the Army is in trouble.

But it isn’t just the Army, an institution most of America never sees in the flesh or, for that matter, thinks much about all that often. The crisis endured by these troops, their families and friends is ours. too, and in time their troubles will cast a shadow over us all.